He knows O.C.'s oldest traditions

Sept. 26, 2013

Updated Sept. 27, 2013 11:21 a.m.

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Nathan K. Banda, left, gives Linda Aguilar and her 10-year-old son Anthony Aguilar a hug as she arrives at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point for a Native American cleansing ceremony. Linda is recovering from breast cancer. The cleansing is in addition to, not in place of, traditional medical treatment. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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Nathan K. Banda of San Juan Capistrano talks about the Native American cleansing he will perform on Linda Aguilar at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point. In front of him on a buck skin are the wing feathers of a hawk, a Native American neckless that Banda will wear during the ceremony and a bundle of dried sage that he will light and use for the cleansing. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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Linda Aguilar, left, and Nathan K. Banda stand at the edge of the water at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point as Banda performs a Native American cleansing ceremony. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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Linda Aguilar, left, and Nathan K. Banda walk down to the waters edge at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point as Banda performs a Native American cleansing ceremony. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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Nathan K. Banda, left, and Linda Aguilar stand at the edge of the water at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point as Banda performs a Native American cleansing ceremony. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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A Moyla, the historical name for moon by the Acjachemen Nation (the indigenous people of San Juan Capistrano) hangs over a hut at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point as Nathan K. Banda performs a Native American cleansing on Linda Aguilar, both from San Juan Capistrano. Aguilar is recovering from breast cancer. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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Linda Aguilar of San Juan Capistrano gets a hug from her 10-year-old son Anthony Aguilar. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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Nathan K. Banda, a member of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation, with his 2-year-old daughter Nevaeh Banda at their home in San Juan Capistrano. Nevaeh is seen as special by tribal elders because both parents are Juaneno, something that hasn't happened in more than 40 years. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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Nathan K. Banda, a member of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation, with his two girls, Nevaeh Banda, 2, and Marisella Banda, 11, right, at their home in San Juan Capistrano. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

Nathan K. Banda, left, gives Linda Aguilar and her 10-year-old son Anthony Aguilar a hug as she arrives at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point for a Native American cleansing ceremony. Linda is recovering from breast cancer. The cleansing is in addition to, not in place of, traditional medical treatment. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

When she was still in the womb, a respected tribal Elder among the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation, came to pray over her.

This little girl will have the eyes of an eagle, the Elder said. Oh, she will be someone special.

The girl’s father, Nathan K. Banda, is telling me about this over lunch.

When we finish, he drives back to his job as office manager for Grips Athletics, which make technical apparel for Jujiitsu and mixed-martial-arts fight wear. “Both things I don’t do,” he jokes.

Before he leaves, we agree to meet a few nights later on a nearby beach to observe him perform something the Juaneño have practiced for centuries – something called hikwsch (hick-uh-sash.)

• • •

Good medicine, he says. That’s why he’s here.

Twilight at Doheny State Beach finds Banda alone. Gone are the surfers and volleyball crowd. He unwraps a buckskin pouch. It holds an abalone-shell necklace that he will wear, a hawk wing that he will wave and a small bundle of sage that he will burn.

“I pick the sage myself,” says Banda, 29, of San Juan Capistrano. “If you ever see it for sale, don’t buy it. (Sage) is not supposed to be used to make money.”

He’s been fasting all day, listening to bird songs and clearing his mind of negative thoughts.

Soon, he’s joined on the sand by a woman undergoing radiation for breast cancer. They walk into the nearby palapa, a thatch-roofed hut. Banda blesses it with sage smoke.

He’s here to rid her of bad medicine and replace it with good medicine, in a way you won’t find at any hospital.

• • •

Banda is no medicine man or shaman.

He is an average Joe; an average American Joe. And one of about 500 Acjachemen (a-HOSH-a-mun) or Juaneños (Wah-NAY-nyos) living in and around Orange County.

He is warm and open. Funny. He talks at great length about his mom, Barbara “Bobbie” Banda, a respected tribal Elder who died in May.

She had the ability to see when people were troubled, and to help them.

“I’d be getting ready to go to work and she’d say: Go outside.

“But I’ve got to drop off the kids and get to work,” he’d protest.

Go outside right now.

“And she’d sage me. And cleanse me. And ask the creator and our ancestors: ‘Take care of my son. I know he’s busy, but I need you to protect him.’”

And sure enough, he’d feel better. Others did too after being cleansed by Bobbie Banda. So when she died, they began calling her son – who’d accompanied his mom from a young age – for a cleansing, known in the old language as hikwsch.

More than 3 million people live in Orange County. But what do we know of the first people to live here, the people who lived here before Orange County had a name; before America had a name?

They called themselves the Acjachemen Nation. In the late 1700s, Fr. Junipero Serra named them the Juaneño after the Mission San Juan they’d been forced to build.

Quickly, the Acjachemen lost their names, their language, their way of life to the settlers who took the land.

Unlike other tribes, the Acjachemen never were put on a reservation. Rather, they were encroached upon until they and much of their history shrunk from sight. Today, they’re not recognized by the federal government as a tribe.

“So much was lost,” says Acjachemen cultural director Adelia Sandoval, 60, of Tustin. “We only have a handful of jewels left – songs, dances, ceremonies, language. We don’t want to lose them.”

That’s why the bear dance, the bird songs and the cleansingsare so dear to them.

“I live in this world,” says Sandoval, an author, speaker and spiritual leader. “I’m an American citizen. I go to school. I go to work. I’m very much part of the world.

“But the very core of me is Acjachemen. That’s my identity.”

That’s what she and Banda want to preserve.

• • •

The ceremony is sacred, so I can’t get too close.

But I can smell the burning sage; hear the chanting. I watch Banda and Linda Aguilar, 33, of San Juan Capistrano, step into the waves where Aguilar’s burdens are returned to Mother Earth.

When they’re done, Banda says “My mother never told anyone ‘I’m going to heal you.’ And I never do either.”

In other words, he makes it clear that he’s not treating Aguilar’s cancer. Instead, he’s dealing with its psychological side effects.

“It’s for what medicine can’t cure,” says Aguilar, a dental assistant who is not Juaneño, but grew up among Juaneños.

‘It’s for the scars I have inside. The worries. The fears.”

What fears?

“Fear of death, you know?”

She hugs her 10-year-old son Anthony. As they leave, she says “I feel so much lighter now. I feel at peace.”

Banda leaves too, returning home to his daughters, Marisella, 11, from a previous marriage, and Nevaeh, 2.

The younger girl is thought to be the first child in 40 years born to parents who are both Juaneño.

“She has the eyes of an eagle,” says Sandoval, who, in her role as Elder, has given the girl gifts and sealed messages to open when she comes of age at 13.

“She will have the vision of her people when she grows up.”

She may be the one. Time will tell.

“She has an old soul,” Banda says. “Sometimes she catches me crying for my mother and says, ‘Dad, don’t cry for Nana. She’s in Heaven.’”

Apt words from a 2-year old, whose name, spelled backward, also happens to be …

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